Thoughts about mindfulness, mortality and how we deal with it. There may be some funeral thoughts, including practical ideas from my own experience of many funerals, but there are other 'good funeral guides.' I want to offer branch lines rather than the express route from midwife to funeral director. I want this to be about mindfulness, life and mortality, not about dying. But...

Monday, 12 March 2012

No flashy video, it doesn't need one, and this is the original recording with his then-wife Linda. There's also a good performance on YouTube video by RT and Christine Collister.

You may know of Thompson the teenage prodigy, Thompson one of the very few truly great and inimitable guitarists, Thompson the powerfully original songwriter. Did you know he is also a true thinker about mortality? In this song he captures an essential, simple truth: life is a risk, we live with death, and the only true freedom is to be found, not on the other rides, but on the Wall of Death. I respectfully suggest you play this loud.

Let me ride on the Wall Of Death one more timeLet me ride on the Wall Of Death one more timeYou can waste your time on the other ridesThis is the nearest to being aliveOh let me take my chances on the Wall Of Death

You can go with the crazy people in the Crooked HouseYou can fly away on the Rocket or spin in the MouseThe Tunnel Of Love might amuse youNoah's Ark might confuse youBut let me take my chances on the Wall Of Death

On the Wall Of Death all the world is far from meOn the Wall Of Death it's the nearest to being free

Well you're going nowhere when you ride on the carouselAnd maybe you're strong but what's the good of ringing a bellThe switchback will make you crazy. Beware of the bearded ladyOh let me take my chances on the Wall Of Death

Let me ride on the Wall Of Death one more timeOh let me ride on the Wall Of Death one more timeYou can waste your time on the other ridesThis is the nearest to being aliveOh let me take my chances on the Wall Of DeathLet me take my chances on the Wall Of DeathOh let me take my chances on the Wall Of Death

Saturday, 10 March 2012

I urge you not to miss a contribution to The Good Funeral Guide, by Rupert Callender of The Green Funeral Company. As a commenter says, this is a meditation of the highest order: calm, profound, poetic and moving. Sample below:

As undertakers, we work in an area where meanings blur and identities become less certain. For us, a body is just that: a body. Something awkward and heavy to be treated practically between us, to be lifted and moved, dressed or washed. But when they are in the presence of those who loved them, they become people again, suffused with personality and history, mute vessels for love and longing, themselves but changed. It is to witness this change that we gently lead the living toward, no more certain as to what it means than they, only sure that it is as important as it is painful.

He calls himself an undertaker. I think he's rather more than what we customarily mean by that description. It's unfair to expect all "funeral directors" * to have Rupert's qualities, but it really would help the living as well as the dead if more of them did.

* The "" are because many or most funeral directors don't, actually, do what the title suggests. They organise journeys, make arrangements, and they are body handlers. This latter function is one most of us probably don't want to perform, and I greatly respect undertakers for doing so - it can be a very grim side of the job. But many or most of the ones I work with not only don't direct the funeral ceremony (that is, the funeral) they aren't even in the room!

Inside the room - sad people, sometimes weeping, sometimes laughing; music and song; friends and relatives and a celebrant talking about the dead person, about the meaning of what is happening, about...etc.

Often, outside the room, funeral director and assistants talking thus: "I see the Arsenal done alright last night." "yeah, but that late penalty, I mean..." OK, we all need a bit of a respite from demanding jobs, and they will have heard enough funeral ceremonies to last them eternity itself - but the people who direct funerals are vicars and priests, celebrants and ministers. Not "funeral directors."

Rupert Callender and Claire direct funerals. They are a lot more than undertakers.